


and the air is sweeter than it's ever been

by bonrose



Category: Layton Kyouju Series | Professor Layton Series
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:34:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27921595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bonrose/pseuds/bonrose
Summary: it never hurts any less, no matter how many times she goes back.claire might have been afraid of death, once, but reliving this moment again, and again, over and over... it was so, so much worse.
Relationships: Claire/Hershel Layton, claire & hershel layton
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> [rated teen just in case for talk of death and such]

it never hurts any less, no matter how many times she goes back.

claire might have been afraid of death, once, but reliving this moment again, and again, over and over... it was so, so much worse.

_how many times can you say goodbye to your lover?_ she thinks, as she relives the worst moment of her life, again, and again, and again.

an explosion. silence. bleary eyes and strange, unfamiliar streets; they reminded her of home, but home had _changed._

every time she opened her eyes she couldn't see like she used to. her glasses were all but shattered by the explosion's impact, and so she wandered the familiar streets of london, with only the slightest inkling that something was different; that this wasn't the london she had come to know and love in her youth.

_hershel,_ was her next thought. _i need to talk to hershel._ and so she set off to find him, though her efforts were fruitless- it was as if london's map had changed like one of those sliding puzzles her sweetheart loved so much; the ones she could never get the answers to, no matter how much she tried. 

it was dimitri, in the end, that she found first. "claire," he said, tears in his eyes. "claire, i thought you were _dead._

"it's been _ten years,_ claire. we _all_ thought you were long gone."

claire feels faint, and suddenly everything goes dark.


	2. Chapter 2

she wakes up somewhere unfamiliar, still unable to see clearly. dimitri's familiar voice echoes in a nearby room, and she feels a little safer, in all her uncertainty.

he fills her in on the blanks, later. the explosion. bill hawks. the time machine.

...hershel.

hershel had never left london, not permanently, he said. "only on his little expeditions," dimitri said. it made claire smile to know that even after what had happened, hershel was still living his life like he always had. 

even if she knew she no longer had a place in that life.

it made her feel so melancholy, the more she thought about it. how hershel had moved on in his life, how he had followed his dreams- it made her happy, of course, but knowing she would never be a part of that, much as she wanted it... it hurt her, in many ways.

"can i see him?" she asks dimitri, later in the day. dimitri turns to her, a sad look in his eyes.

"...you mean hershel, i presume." his voice has a sad, regretful undertone to it- the kind you only notice in someone you know like the back of your hand. "you- i- he..." dimitri sighs. claire noticed he'd sighed a lot more in the future than he'd ever done back in her time.

(was it really her time anymore?)

"he never really got over you," he says, after a moment's silence. "he spent forever trying to find out what had really happened, you know. kept poking his head in places where he shouldn't have," dimitri continued. "it left him with a good few beatings and some lousy remains of his stolen research."

"if you talked to him again, now... i don't know how he'd handle that, claire," was his reasoning. it was a half-truth, claire noticed. she had always been perceptive about these kinds of things.

so she told him as much. 

"that's not all, is it?" she asks. dimitri sighs again, and shakes his head. it's a secret, he tells her. she looks wistfully out the window, after this.

"dimitri." he looks at her from  
across the room, listening. 

"what?"

a car drives by outside, and the breeze knocks a flower from a hanging basket loose. it drifts through the window and lands in claire's hand. 

and suddenly, she remembers.


End file.
